The Legends of Anigma: Ethiel Archer | ONC 2023

PART III

It was the same room, identical in every way, but the door was closed. Behind, the mirror led back into the room where they had actually come from, the door was still open and everything still seemed comparatively bright.

Ethiel wondered if the mirror was a portal, but he still couldn't understand why they were in an identical room; a thought lingered in his head: had they stepped into the reflection?

"Wow..." Tifa gasped.

"What is it?" Ethiel turned to her.

She pointed at the windows, her mouth agape.

The view took away his breath.

A beautiful waterfall flowed down elegantly down a rocky, mossy hill and smashed down into the pool of crystal clear water below. Above, the green-blue skies had these indigo auroras dancing languidly, transparent curtains of silk among the drifting, scarce clouds of dull violet.

It was like a dream, so captivating that Ethiel was left speechless, unexpectedly lost in appreciation, oblivious of everything.

"What is behind this door?" Tifa's voice came from behind.

She was by the door, hands on the knob. Before he could tell her to wait for him, she opened it wide.

"Oh my," She was intrigued by whatever she saw.

Ethiel hurried over to her.

A big room was before him, a work of wood belonging to olden times. It was like a hall with a joint kitchen in the lower right corner. In the top right corner, a worn out trunk rested in webs and dust beside a busy, neatly organized table and a huge bookshelf.

A wooden showcase stood tall in the left, reaching almost up to the ceiling, filled with things that were anything but normal or earthly – the most unsettling of them all was the stone miniature of a naked baby with an eerily big head, his face having a disturbingly mature expression heavy with a sleeping anger, hungry for bloody massacre. Its eyes were scarily real and to Ethiel's surprise, they suddenly rolled and fixed right at him, startling his soul out of his body for a moment. The threatened feeling that exploded in his shrunken heart, he had never felt such a fear in his life. Those eyes shifted to Tifa, but then, as if disappointed, they returned to their original position after a horrifying "guu guu".

That was a big relief; he could dare again to look at the rest of the room.

Right in the centre of the whole place was a comfortable sofa chair with a small round table in front of it, facing a door flanked by curtained windows – it was apparently the way out of that place.

There was only one thing on the round table, and that one thing took Ethiel back to his childhood; it was a wooden cube block, each side of it being brown but a shade lighter or darker than the other.

Tears welled up his eyes as he slowly proceeded to it. When he took it in his hands, memories rushed back to him.

"What is that?" Tifa asked.

"It's a puzzle," He gazed upon it, ponderous and sad; a slight smile popped on his face. "Used to be our thing – mom's and mine – back when I was a kid. She'd leave little gifts, notes, or messages through these."

"How to solve it?"

"Each side has one small square of a slightly different shade, the difference would've been negligible if I wasn't a tetrachromat," He showed her a square on one side, "I doubt if you can see this too."

"I can. But what's a tetrachromat?"

"Guess we both are tetrachromats like mom then. It basically means we have extra colour-sensitive eyes."

"Ah. Okay, what next?"

"Next we press the square, but we start from the side with the lightest shade," he pressed the square and it got pushed in. "We continue to do this on each side that is a shade darker than the previous one until the square on all the sides are pressed. And that's it." He completed the puzzle as he explained.

The side facing the top popped out of the cube and fell on the grey carpet. A small cavity revealed itself inside.

"And now?" Tifa was getting curious.

"Now to see what's in this," he squinted.

The cavity contained a folded piece of paper, a flash drive, and a small glass sphere filled with water.

Ethiel took out the piece of paper and unfolded it. Something was written on it, and from the handwriting, he was damn sure the one who wrote it was his mother. He started reading, "If you have come here and found this, then fate has chosen you my children. Use the flash drive, and be careful with the glass sphere."

It was a strange day; to be exact, it was a strange week. Time only made it stranger still. To Ethiel, that piece of paper and those words were just another addition to the collection.

He looked at Tifa. She was looking at him. He couldn't quite understand if she was curious or confused.

"What?" She asked impatiently.

If nothing else, he at least knew she wasn't asking what the words meant.

"What what?" He asked back, not knowing what to say.

"Don't just stand there! Use the flash drive already!"

"Oh, right–" He was more surprised to see someone of her age being able to process everything and take it so easily.

They went back to the room with the mirror; the desktop was there.

"Hope this isn't toast," Ethiel switched it on.

"If it is, we have an alternative – your laptop." Tifa reminded.

Luckily, the desktop was functioning properly and was fast. He inserted the flash drive and opened its folder in the computer.

The content of the flash drive were all videos, named sequentially. He opened the first video.

The moment it played, his heart stopped beating, shattered and then fell into the blue depths of his lost soul.

There she was, in the screen – his mother – smiling and yet so sad. She was seated on a chair and behind her was a mysterious and congested room.

"Mom..." That was Tifa, her voice as dejected as him.

"Hello Ethiel, hello Tifa," Their mother, Alice, waved at them. "I know that by this time, I have been killed. Sadly, my prediction was correct."

On his mind that was already shocked and off-balance, her syllables fell like bombs blowing out his wits completely.

But she wasn't actually there to pause and spare his broken heart and show some mercy; the video continued indifferently.